Sunday, April 10, 2016

Another win for Bernie Sanders in Wyoming yesterday, but does it really help?

Sen. Bernie Sanders won Wyoming’s Democratic caucus Saturday as he looks to narrow Hillary Clinton’s sizable lead in delegates needed to clinch the Democratic Party’s nomination.

A victory in the Cowboy State marks Sanders' eighth in the past nine contests before a critical showdown April 19 in New York. With only 14 delegates at stake, the results won’t mean much in the grand delegate scheme, and Sanders has performed well in similar Western, rural states like Nebraska. While Sanders won the popular vote at the Wyoming caucus 56% to Clinton's 44%, they each received seven delegates.

This makes the seventh victory in a row for Sanders.

However as USA Today pointed out he and Hillary split the delegates evenly, and in fact Hillary had already secured Wyoming's four super delegates, so in the end it only counts as a victory as far as momentum is concerned.

However if Sanders were to pull off a victory in New York, whose primary is scheduled for April 19th along with Connecticut and Delaware, that might prove more than a little unsettling for the Clinton camp.

Right now that appears unlikely, but even a close second could result in a serious loss of confidence for Hillary and her supporters.

I trust HIlary or Bernie more than any Repub candidate with the football. I just them to appointment better Supreme Court Justices. They all have problems, and I trust no one completely, but if I wait for someone I trust completely, I'll never vote, and then poeple like Trump and Cruz gain traction.

Bernie got 56% of the vote to Hillarys 44% But the DNC saw to it that the delegates get split evenly and the loser gets all of the supers, Nothing rigged about that huh ? : / But that's alright, Once the people have their final say Bernie Sanders will be the nominee, Take it to the bank : )

Right? Why even bother with the primaries at all if the super delegates choose whomever they want and the delegates are split? Kind of like the general election where the electoral college chooses our POTUS, not the voters.

The DNC didn't see to it that the votes were split evenLY. The rules for delegates was set before Hillary decided to run, before Bernie decided to run. They didn't used to be that way, but were put in place for reasons that no one objects too until it works against them. If you want to change the rules, get involved.

Thank you, 10:11. The media has convinced people that Hillary set up this system. She did not, but she knows how to use it. If Bernie was so gungho to run as a Dem, should he have not done his homework about HOW to run as a Democrat? Instead of moaning and bitching and taking it out on Hillary? So mature, Bern, kind of like the way you treated your wife.

OMG, Berners - your guy Tad Devine (Bernie's campaign manager)?set up this SD system as a fail safe against insurgents like Trump & Sanders. Bernie surely knew about it: he's a SuperDelegate himself! It's only 15% of the total vote. Bernie should not have run as a Democrat (and become a SuperDelegate) if he didn't like it. HE IS A SUPERDELEGATE!

The total number of Democratic votes in Wyoming was only 280 - 156 for Sanders and 124 for Clinton - so the impact in the grand scheme of things is pretty negligible since he only won the primary by a margin of 32 votes.

Oh for chrissakes, those "votes" reported isn't the vote count by individual voters, it's the count of precinct delegates who were elected to go on to the next step by the voters who attended the caucus. There were far more people who attended the caucuses and voted than the count you're citing. He didn't win by "just" 32 votes. He won 156 of 280 , 56% of the precinct delegates. They go to the next step and vote again. Some caucus states have even a third vote before the delegates to the convention are elected.

The Clinton's were terrible to Barack Obama during the 2008 election cycle. I found it really funny that Hills had to suck it up and take the "booby prize" of Secretary of State so as not to look like a spoil-sport.

I was always pleased that President Obama asked Hillary Clinton to be a part of his Administration. It was a brilliant choice/move and they both have great respect for each other. The media is what makes them appear differently.

this splitting of the delegates when he is clearly the winner and the fact that the supers fall on hilleries side even tho sander won,, will switch my vote from her to anyone else if she gets the nomination this way.

Barbara, I don't like to agree with you on this, but kind of have to, when i read Tulsi Gabbard's wikipedia page. Seems like she was set to go far in the Democratic Party, until she voiced her conscience.

Oh please. This happened in 2000 and 2004 and 2008 and 2012. Why is it suddenly this huge unfair thing? Sanders decided to run as a Democrat...should he not have known the rules going in? He's starting to sound like Trump: 'well, if they don't hand me the nomination, I'll take my millions and my supporters and run on my own.' Please proceed.

They didn't decide to split the vote. According to the rules set before the campaign began, the votes were apportioned according to the rules. If the numbers had been reversed, it would have worked out the same (except for superdelegates which is a different issue, which can also be debated, but were set BEFORE the campaign began). Bernie didn't have to run as a Democrat. Now that it works against him, he wants to change the rules.

For young voters, the foundational issues of our age have been the Iraq invasion, and to one degree or another, the modern Democratic Party, often including Hillary Clinton personally, has been on the wrong side of virtually all of these issues.

Hillary not only voted for the Iraq War, but offered a succession of ridiculous excuses

Remember, this was one of the easiest calls ever.

A child could see that the Bush administration's fairy tales about WMDs and Iraqi drones spraying poison over the capital (where were they going to launch from, Martha's Vineyard?) were just that, fairy tales.

Yet Hillary voted for the invasion for the same reason many other mainstream Democrats did: They didn't want to be tagged as McGovernite peaceniks.

The new Democratic Party refused to be seen as being too antiwar, even at the cost of supporting a wrong one.

Putting that aside, what negative policies does Sander's represent? Sure, a lot of his ideas are pie-in-the-sky and may even be unworkable (they wouldn't get passed by Congress anyway), but with Clinton, we know what we'll get--the Status Quo, that long slow slide we've been feeling for quite a while where the only reason to vote for her is because otherwise it'll just happen faster with the GOP in charge. Clinton is up to her ears with contributions from and obligations to the slimiest part of the Democratic party--Wall Street and dirty money. Yes with her we'll keep the Freedom of Choice and protection of civil rights for Gays, but on the flip side, senators will keep their perks of insider trading, arms exports will go through the roof, the Panama Papers and similar scandals will be swept under the rug, taxes for the rich won't go up, and everyone else will be told to tighten our belts because "we just can't afford (schools, roads, bridges, environment, etc.)"

Anonymous 11:02, that's a good question that I'd love to see attempted to be solved. With Sanders in charge there would at least be some effort. But with Clinton, it won't even be considered because she has no real interest in addressing meaningful reform, she'll have to get re-elected in 2020 and these are her biggest contributors.

...Listen closely and you might feel a rumbling that courses through political conversations, and it is not just the familiar trumping of fascist boots-on-the-ground. We have watched the best minds of a generation ground-up by inequality and social-anxiety, watched the decline of democracy and the rise of dynasties, the worst prosper, while the rest fall behind—and Hillary Clinton is beginning to represent, to many young Americans, the most detestable elements of the new elite: the smug sense of entitlement, the fusion of money and politics, the craven clamor for war, the swaying to the winds of a public unhinged from reality. And the windows may be about to explode.

Democratic Party elites are alienating a whole new generation of voters and potential party players through their dismissal of Bernie Sanders. Even as he crushes Clinton in a sequence of five-states by 50-percent margins, raises more money, draws in more donors, commands bigger crowds, inspires more devotion, steals the debates, and ruins Republicans in head-to-head polls, still, they insist the primaries are over.

It does not matter, because Clinton is the new face of machine politics. Just as she is owned by the big-donors, she owns the party leadership, who serve as her backstop. The sense of entitlement is simply astounding. And the bullsh*t mounted when Clinton’s campaign strategist, a Wall Street consultant of all people, announced on CNN that Clinton would not debate Sanders unless he changed his tone—unless he changed his tone.

The same people who tarred the Obama candidacy as a “fairy tale” in 2008, in the words of President Bill, portray Sanders as a racist, old, gun-toting white-man. The constant reference to Sanders’ purported pro-gun record is a barely disguised effort not to talk issues but to paint a caricature for inner-city African Americans. Clinton even hinted that Sanders supports the so-called Minute-Men, who guard the Mexican border. Never mind the fact he once got arrested fighting for civil rights, that the National Rifle Association score his record at a D-minus, or that his program would benefit the disenfranchised more than any President since FDR; the innuendo never lets up. And then Clinton projects onto Sanders the negative tone for which she is so well known. It is a common tactic of bullies.

Brilliant assessment. If you don't have the backing of the youth, where is the Democratic party headed? The same way as the GOP, with its dying base of supporters -- who are just as angry as the young people supporting Bernie. Two sides, same coin.

I say let the two sides battle it out (Sanders vs. Trump) and see if young people can outvote old people? They put in Obama. They can do it again with Bernie. But shut them out with unfair DNC primary/convention practices (like the RNC is planning to do to Trump) and the Dems are finished. Young people will be as angry as Trump's supporters.

Bernie may not be a cool, calm Obama, but he has a vision for American that is not Corporate owned, where elections can't be bought or voters suppressed, where revolution-inciting (read history) inequality is a real and devastating thing -- even for the 1% (and they know it).

Bernie is the political embodiment of the Occupy Movement which was too threatening to Wall St./Corporate America to be allowed to survive. Remember the police raids, etc.?

The MSM has connived to dismiss Bernie & and his hugely enthusiastic (hopeful) rallies and so are Bill & Hillary, just like they did to Obama.

Barbara, IIRC, as an ex-pat, you might wish to actually be here on US soil before complaining about the Democratic Party & young people. I know a ton of young people working for HRC. Someone in my family is a part of the young Democrats' many programs, picked since high school & trained within the Party structure. And wow, this family member has met all the top tier Democratic stars, from Senator Warren, to The First Lady, to the VP, to our President, and more. The young people in the Democratic Party are amazing and will change the world. But they are Democrats! They do not want to destroy the party at all.

“We need somebody who is gonna move much more aggressively. I don’t believe Bernie Sanders is perfect, but I do believe that his track record on climate change is really stellar. I mean, I was part of the movement against the Keystone XL pipeline. I was arrested outside the White House. Bernie Sanders was supporting us every step of the way. And look, we were up against Hillary Clinton, because Clinton’s State Department at that time had commissioned really flawed environmental assessments from corporations who had a long track record of working with the oil industry, and they produced these reports saying “Oh, well you can build the Keystone XL pipeline and it won’t have a significant environmental impact”. And this was just madness. I think that taught me a lot about who Bernie Sanders is and who Hillary Clinton is, and the argument I make in the piece is that it is not just about the donations from the ‘Warren Buffet’s’ and from the fossil fuel lobbyists, or the direct donations to the Clinton Foundation, the Bill, Hillary, Chelsea Clinton Foundation. And they’ve received direct donations from Exxon, from Shell, from ConocoPhillips, from Chevron. It’s not just about all of that, it’s about the worldview that that represents. I believe we’ve tried the win-win logic, the corporate win-win logic when it comes to climate change for a couple decades now. The track record is abysmal and now we actually have to do the hard work of saying “No” to fossil fuel companies and saying “Yes” in a very big way to renewables. So this can be win-win for the people. But it can’t be win-win for the corporations and that’s why the Clinton entanglements with the corporate world and this logic of “No, we can’t take them on. We have to partner with them.” Is so incredibly toxic at this climate countdown moment. That’s why I decided to endorse Bernie Sanders.”

"Unfortunately, neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump — the two leading presidential candidates right now — inspire much confidence that climate change will be a priority for their administrations.

As the activist Naomi Klein recently bemoaned, while Clinton was secretary of state, “she had a huge megaphone to make [climate change] an issue, to show that she understands the connections between human security and climate, [yet] she didn’t use the megaphone.”

Because of this, Klein opines that Bernie Sanders would be “a significantly better candidate.” Indeed, not only has Sanders made climate change a central theme of his campaign, but he twice characterized it as the biggest national security threat facing the country, a claim that comports with the above-mentioned statements by Brennan, Hagel and the Department of Defense."

The article documents what is happening as state legislators are effectively bypassing R v Wade by charging women with murder for just trying to obtain abortions legally.

It’s happening literally hundreds of times across the country. While some of these charges were ultimately dismissed, others of these women have been convicted, and many more have served jail time while awaiting trial. In some cases, jailing these women leaves their children without a mother.

"Roe v Wade is the law of the land and must remain so." Bernie Sanders, Dec 30, 2015.Mrs Clinton also will never agree to weaken further our reproductive health care laws and she also will not allow the gov't to interfere with a woman's right to choose.

Abortions are sometimes needed and required. Take incest as a big part of the issue! Knowing that subject well and being impregnated by a father - what else are you going to do except abort?

Best decision I ever made and have never looked back at doing it! A child could have been born with birth defects as a starter.

So screw these asshole Republican politicians encroaching on women's rights! Vote them out of office - especially in the U.S. Congress and in your state Legislatures! They are a sick bunch of white, older men that sorely need to be replaced and have zero right in women's private decisions and parts.

Spreading hate has backfired on right-wing media: How Fox News unwittingly destroyed the Republican Party

For years, Fox News has profited from its vicious, divisive rhetoric — and now a steep price is being paid

The Republican Party is in a pickle.

The Party itself despises its own two leading presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. This is a remarkable oddity just in itself. But there is good reason for it. Both of these candidates are so extreme and disastrous that they will almost certainly never be able to win a national election for the Republican Party.

But much worse, if and when one of these candidates does become the Republican Party’s nominee, the GOP could very well be torn asunder into factions. This could devastate the party for years or even decades to come.

The Republicans, however, have no one to blame but themselves. This is a crisis of their own creation. And it didn’t just happen overnight.

It will take a miracle for Bernie Sanders to beat Hillary Clinton. And that's OK

If Clinton wins the nomination, Sanders has said he will endorse her and urge his supporters to vote for the Democratic ticket. But he will also try to turn his campaign into a more durable movement to move the Democratic Party to the left.

After suffering through a string of recent defeats, Clinton appears poised to recapture her momentum in New York and Pennsylvania where she leads Sanders by 16 and 11 percentage points, respectively, in the Fox News polling.In New York, Clinton leads Sanders 53% to 37%; and in Pennsylvania, she tops him 49% to 38%.

When she was behind in Superdelegates to Obama (2008) she was told not to whine. This time it's said she is unfair.

The Superdelegates are not committed to her the way regular delegates are. Superdelegates can change their mind. Bernie can woo them. He has chosen not to, and then blame Hilary and the rules - the rules in place since the moment he joined the Democratic Party.

He doesn't stand a chance? Then why the aggressiveness? Why aren't Hillary supporters kicked back, chuckling and letting the old socialist and his idiot followers have their fun, spend their money? Instead they're working overtime on every site you can go to posting negatives about Sanders. Rarely do you see them promoting Clinton, it's all negatives about Sanders. I think you all realize that the Clinton campaign has kicked it up in NY because their internal polls say Sanders is closing in and might beat her.

Do you think all Hillary supporters are aggressive? that they are all (or even most) work overtime on every site to post negative about Sandres? That they don't promote Clinton's positives?

Do you think HIllary should just relax in New York. Is focusing on NY when NY is next some kind of weakness and a sign of internal polls. That kicking it up (whatever you are referring to) might be because she has such a large base of supporters in New York?, and since it's not a winner-take-all, every delegate is important?

Why would you want HIllary supporters to kick back, chuck, and view Sanders as an old socialist and his followers as idiots? Do you think that is what all/most Hillary supporters are like?

Bernie Sanders is a big disappointment to every Hillary Clinton supporter. He has turned into a grumpy dishonest old man, where once he was a respected elder. The more lies he tells about Hillary Clinton, the more vocal we will be. Get used to it.

And the more lies he tells about himself, the more we and the world will expose him.

Just listen to him tell Joy Behar that he was invited to the Vatican to meet the pope. Watch her believe him, the lying opportunistic old bastard.

Raised in a veritable shtetl in Brooklyn, the Bernmeister had a bar mitzvah, worked as a volunteer on an Israeli kibbutz — a collective farm modeled on communist principles — for several months while in his 20s, and counts a number of his European ancestors as victims of the Holocaust.

But the geriatric Vermont senator, who craves toppling Her Hillaryness from her presidential perch as he might crave a bagel with a schmear, is hardly down with the Chosen People...

Bernie Sanders, 74, has forged a far-left political brand, siding with Jew-haters and Israel foes, which is redundant. I urge Jews and their supporters voting in New York’s Democratic presidential primary on April 19 to reject Bernie. He’s not good for the Jews, or anyone else. The rotten actor is certainly not good for the City of New York, home to more Jews than Jerusalem is.

Bernie is strangely quiet about his recent history-making achievement. Winning the New Hampshire Democratic primary on Feb. 9, Sanders became not only the first Jew ever to win a presidential primary or caucus, but the first non-Christian to do so.

This might help explain why he doesn’t talk about it. Sanders was the only presidential candidate, Democrat or Republican, to skip the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s Policy Conference in Washington, DC, last month. Campaigning in Utah, Sanders instead delivered a speech to the pro-Israel lobbying group from afar that was highly critical of the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians.

He uttered the tired refrain that Israel’s military needs to end its “disproportionate” responses to Palestinian terror...

About Me

This blog is dedicated to finding the truth, exposing the lies, and holding our politicians and leaders accountable when they fall far short of the promises that they have made to both my fellow Alaskans and the American people.